October 24, 2015

Woodland Embossing Folder

Amy Jasper Christmas, Techniques card, Christmas, embossing, Stampin' Up, technique, tutorial, woodland folder 122 Comments

The Woodland embossing folder by Stampin’ Up! is so versatile for Christmas, Halloween, fall, winter, summer – it can literally be used for anything!

My new favourite is to use it to create a forest scene. I’ve seen this done by a few other demonstrators, but I ran into a few problems along the way and thought I could share my trouble-shooting with you.

First, here’s the card I made and have since fallen in love with:

To created this card, I used a direct ink pad to embossing folder technique. This has been done before, but this time I used Soft Sky where the lower half of the sky was going to be, then used Pool Party for the upper half of the sky.

My first few attempts gave me blobs and pools of colour that didn’t jive with my expectations. This is likely because my ink pads are nice and juicy. Normally, you want a juicy ink pad for great colour distribution, but it can backfire a bit on you with solid flat sections on a stamp or when you want to use the ink pad for sponging techniques.

You could work with some of these effects for a different overall look, but I was looking for something softer and smoother.

Soft Sky ink – no brayer

Soft Sky ink – spritzed with water – no brayer

Soft Sky ink – with brayer

When I get blotches of ink on a stamp (like when I used my Definitely Dahlia background stamp), I will often roll my brayer over the stamp surface after inking it to thin and smooth the ink. I decided to try it with the ink on my folder.

Once I sorted out my sky and decided on the Pool Party/Soft Sky ink combo, I could proceed with directly stamping my Winter Wonderland trees with Mossy Meadow ink on the Woodland embossing folder. I stamped them in varying heights and was careful to re-ink my stamp each time to ensure every tree was solid.

With my images and inking completed, I was ready to press my Whisper White cardstock. If you lay the paper on the un-inked side of your embossing folder, you will avoid the risk of smudging the ink on the cardstock. I chose to lay my paper dead center on the un-inked side of the folder so that the messy bottom area of my stamped trees wouldn’t show on my cardstock, but I would have a nice tree line showing in the middle-upper area of my cardstock piece.

Fold it all together carefully, holding it so it does. not. move, run it through the Big Shot.

Vacant areas actually work on this project, because it is an art piece. You can interpret those vacant areas as wisps of clouds or even snow.

Finishing the card was simple. I didn’t want to cover up the pretty woodland image, but wanted to highlight it as much as I could. I started with a Crumb Cake mat behind the embossed cardstock and layered that on my Thick Whisper White card base with Stampin’ Dimensionals. The sentiment from the Hostess stamp set, Six Sayings, was stamped in Early Espresso ink on a Whisper White banner. Linen Thread tied in a bow to finish it with a bit of natural texture.

The final touch is adding the 3 sequins (pronounced “seek-wins”, not “sequence”, lol!). I thought of them as Christmas ornaments hanging from the trees, but they could also be thought of as sparkly snow softly falling from the sky.

You can order any of these products by clicking the ‘shop now’ button on my website or by contacting me through my email.

Now, don’t stop there. If you liked this tutorial, go and give it a try for yourself. Don’t have that embossing folder? Play around with what you have and see what you come up with!

Now get stamping!

October 23, 2015

Orange Watercolour Wash

Amy Jasper As You See It Challenge As You See It, birthday, card, challenge, embossing, Gorgeous Grunge, photopolymer, Stampin' Up, watercolour, watercolour wash 2 Comments

Last week, the As You See It Design team honoured Lola, a little girl in the midst of her 5 year battle with Leukemia. We asked that you would create cards with fairies, unicorns, pink, gold, or glitter so that she could view them digitally and enjoy the love and best wishes that they represent. The challenge itself is complete, but the link to load your cards is still active on the website until November 16th. If you haven’t posted a card yet, there’s more time available to shower Lola with kindness. I hope you will take the time to make a card for her and upload it to the As You See It page HERE. She will get to view all of the cards. I know it will put a big smile on her face to see how many people are cheering her on!

For today’s challenge, we have a colour combination.

I chose to use these colours to make a birthday card. One might call it a masculine birthday card, but I don’t like to generalize. This card could be used for anyone who appreciates these colours or this style of card.

Ever since I discovered, while doing the card for a previous post, how much I like this Watercolour Wash background stamp on an angle, I keep wanting to use it! This time I inked it up with my Pumpkin Pie, Lost Lagoon, and Tuxedo Black Momento ink pads. I sponged on the stamp to soften the edges between colours, then stamped it on two layers of Whisper White cardstock at the same time. This allowed me to use the smaller piece for the 2 U sentiment as a layer while still maintaining the continuity of the colour wash over the entire card front.

The letter ‘U’ is from the Larger than Life photopolymer stamp set, which was stamped with Versamark ink and heat embossed with Basic Black embossing powder. I die cut the ‘2’ with my Big Shot and Little Numbers Thinlits and adhered it with my Fine-Tip Glue Pen. The Happy Birthday sentiment is from the Tin of Cards stamp set.

The splatter image from the Gorgeous Grunge stamp set was added in Tuxedo Black Momento ink to the background before adding my layers.

I’m in love with the simple looping of thread and twine on my cards, so I took the black thread out of my Basic Black Baker’s Twine and looped it to add some needed texture to this one.

This card will be added to my Tin of Cards tin as one to save for my family. My nephew and my brother both have birthdays coming up in December. One down, one to go!

Be sure to upload your take on this colour challenge to the As You See It Challenge page. It doesn’t have to be a card, either!!

October 16, 2015

A Fairy for Lola

Amy Jasper As You See It Challenge As You See It, bold butterfly framelits, card, challenge, embossing, lighthearted leaves, photopolymer, Stampin' Up, watercolour wings 3 Comments

I’m so excited to share my card with you today. Because today, I get to show my support for a brave 9 year old girl whom I’ve never met. Lola has been battling Leukemia since 2011. You can learn more about her on the Team Lola Facebook Page.

The As you See It Blog has dedicated the card challenge to Lola this week. I hope you will show your support to her and her family by making a card for her, too. Just imagine the smile on that beautiful face as she sees all of the cards and projects created just for her!

Lola, I chose to use pink and to put a fairy on my card for you. Not everyone knows that Gold is the colour to represent childhood cancer, so I have lots of gold on my card for you, too. I hope you like it!

I love fairies, so of the images for this challenge, I decided to do a fairy card.

Only problem was that I didn’t have any fairy stamps – I have butterflies (lots of butterflies), I have dragonflies, I have dinosaurs, I have robots and I even have gnomes, but no fairies and no unicorns anywhere. But I did have a retired stamp set that I’ve loved forever that had images of people – specifically, of the girl variety of people.

The set is called “She’s All That” and, though it’s not available from Stampin’ Up anymore, you can actually purchase it on Ebay.

Now, the image wasn’t perfect for my needs; as you can see, she was originally walking upright and holding a cake! However, I was able to do a bit of crafty work to stamp the image without her cake and with her legs bent to give a bit of the impression that she was not touching the ground. All I’m going to say is that it involved some scotch tape and the Stamp-a-ma-jig from Stampin’ Up.

If I had the Confetti Hearts border punch, I would have had multiple little hearts blowing off her hand like kisses in the wind.

I don’t have that punch.

Instead, I used the Hearts Border Punch and took one of the little hearts from that for my fairy to hold.

There are a lot of artistic elements to this card (which means I was having a lot of fun!). I first stamped the girl on Whisper White cardstock with Versamark ink so I could heat set Black Embossing Powder over the image so she could be very black and shiny. Then I got to work with a sponge and three pink inks (Pink Pirouette, Blushing Bride, and Melon Mambo) to sponge my background.

The fairy wings are created with Vellum Cardstock, White Stazon ink, the Watercolour Wings stamp set and my Big Shot with the Bold Butterfly framelits. The butterfly die cut image was then folded in half and the body of the butterfly was trimmed away before adhering the wings to my wee lassie. I used Fast Fuse, but you can totally see it if you lift that top wing out of the way.

My black frame was created with Basic Black cardstock, the Big Shot, and the largest of the Lots of Labels framelits. After cutting out the center of the cardstock, I used my Lighthearted Leaves stamp set with Versamark ink (by the way, I always use my Embossing Buddy before I stamp for heat embossing!) and stamped them on the card, heat setting them with Gold Embossing Powder. I also added the three wee stars from the Jingle All the Way stamp set and embossed them with gold.

Whisper White Craft ink was lightly sponged around the inside edge of the frame, which was then adhered over the fairy image using Stampin’ Dimensionals. All of this was matted with Gold Glimmer paper before adhering it to the Pink Pirouette cardstock card base.

On the inside of this card, I stamped the ‘believe’ sentiment and added another Gold Glimmer heart to embellish it.

I do believe in fairies, I do, I do!

Hang in there, Lola. We’re all rootin’ for you, praying for you, and sending love your way.

And, dear readers, don’t pass on the opportunity to bless a brave girl with digital cards of support and encouragement. Do the challenge this week and share your finished project on the As You See It Challenge blog so Lola can enjoy your gift to her!